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Anatomy of a Flex Sched Change; Giants/Panthers

PntherPryd

By PntherPryd,
in Carolina Panthers

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PntherPryd

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Normally I don't have much use for Peter King, just too ... anyway, he's got some interesting insight/reporting on just how the flex change went down;

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/peter_king/12/14/Week15/3.html

The NFL has final say over the games flexed to Sunday night in Weeks 11 through 16 ... and the NFL has absolute say over the final Sunday night game of the year, in Week 17.

I preface this by acknowledging that I am employed by NBC, the beneficiary of the potential to change the late-season schedule, so you rightfully should look at this and say, "Of course King's going to empathize with the concept of flex scheduling and pay homage to powerful Lord Ebersol. It's helping to pay King's massively bloated salary.'' And you'd be right, sort of. So skip over the section if you don't want to read my propaganda about how good flex scheduling is for the football fan from Orono to Oxnard.

For starters, I don't know anyone who wants to risk a return to those glory days of 2004, when we got 3-11 Cleveland versus 3-11 Miami in Week 16, and the 5-10 Giants and 6-9 Cowboys in week 17. NFL Fever! Catch it!

I was curious last week about how the decision was made to change the upcoming Week 16 Sunday night game from San Diego at Tampa Bay to Carolina at the Giants, and about what is on tap for the final weekend of the season, so I phoned Ebersol and also spoke with two other people with knowledge of the TV schedule. First, and probably most important to jittery Jets fans, looking ahead to a potential Miami-New York AFC East championship game in Week 17: NBC and the other Sunday networks, CBS and Fox, will not be able to do anything more than lobby for which game will and won't get moved to the final game of the season on the night of Dec. 28. That's totally a league decision. CBS and Fox cannot block any of their games in Week 17 from moving to Sunday night.

Now on the confusing issue of protected games, which has been interpreted several different ways in the sporting and TV press: Fox and CBS can protect one game on five of the six weeks of NBC's flex scheduling. So Fox and CBS can pick out five games to protect between weeks 11 and 16, and no more than one per weekend. A league source said since Fox and CBS obviously knew NBC would never give up the previously scheduled Giants-Cowboys game this weekend, this was the weekend neither network protected a game.

That brings us to Week 16, for which the league source said Fox protected Philadelphia-Washington, making it the prime late Sunday afternoon game (4:15 p.m.) a matchup of teams from two of its most important markets. CBS protected a game that appears to have massive playoff implications and the only nationally attractive game in its 1 p.m. slot, Pittsburgh at Tennessee. That left NBC with only one potentially sexy game --Carolina at the Giants -- but only if the Panthers beat Tampa Bay last Monday night.

Ebersol listens to lots of voices advising him on which game to request in NBC's six flex weeks, but he relies most heavily on a two-man kitchen cabinet, John Madden and game producer Fred Gaudelli. The contract with the NFL mandates that NBC must make its request 13 days prior to the game, but Ebersol wanted to wait for the result of the Bucs-Panthers Monday nighter last week because if the Bucs won, Carolina would be far less attractive; if Carolina won, the Panthers-Giants game potentially could be for the top seed in the NFC playoffs. This was the first time in three years Ebersol asked to wait 'til after the Monday night game to decide which game he wanted 13 days in the future.

No team can appear on NBC more than four times in a season, and the Giants, who'd been on the NBC late against Washington and Philadelphia and soon Dallas, had one appearance left. Ebersol watched Bucs-Panthers in his Manhattan apartment, and when the Panthers had it safely in hand at the two-minute warning, he phoned NFL senior VP of broadcasting and media operation Howard Katz and formally requested Panthers-Giants. The next morning, commissioner Roger Goodell approved the switch.

"The essence of what Roger and [former commissioner] Paul [Tagliabue] wanted in this TV contract was not only to protect us at NBC,'' Ebersol said. "It was to protect the league, too. In the last four years of the last TV contract, of the last four games of each of those years, only one of the 16 games matched two teams with winning records.

"The NFL wanted competitive games in prime time. And it wanted the ability to take teams they hadn't foreseen as being top teams when the schedule was made -- like Baltimore, which we flexed into the game against Washington last week, and Carolina -- and put them into the Sunday night game. All in all, on all levels, I think it's helped the game. All the networks are at least a smidgeon above or below last year's ratings. While there's been so much erosion in prime-time programming across the board, the NFL remains a consistent draw.''

Of course, Fox isn't happy losing Carolina and the Giants. But if you're a big fan of the NFL, and you don't have DirecTV or four TVs in your living room, and if you can now see the best AFC game of the weekend (Steelers-Titans) early, a game with possible wild-card ramifications following that (Eagles-Redskins), and then a game for NFC playoff supremacy (Panthers-Giants), what's better than that?

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5158Poundin Newbie

5158Poundin

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Although flex scheduling sucks for fans travelling from far distances - it certainly amps up the tv viewership knowing you could see a great game with huge playoff implications.

I am lucky I had already decided to take Monday off and will be at that PRIMETIME game!!

WOOT!! Go Panthers!

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